The STARS4Water project recently released “Data sets on scenario narratives“. These data sets include future domestic, industrial and agricultural water demand, as well as land use/ land cover data until the year 2050 for the seven River Basin Hubs.

STARS4Water aims to improve the understanding of climate change impacts on water resources availability and the vulnerabilities for ecosystems, society, and economic sectors at the river basin scale, providing actionable information to stakeholders. Therefore, we have co-created with stakeholders “river basin-specific scenario narratives” on future socio-economic development until the year 2050. To be able to apply these narratives into our models, we have generated basin-specific data sets on future land use and water demand for the domestic, industrial and agricultural sectors.

Deliverable 2.5 describes the methodology and results. The data sets on future land use scenarios enable quantification of future agricultural (irrigation) water demand consistent with the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). Based on a review of the metadata from available data sets on land use and land cover and their suitability to the STARS4Water project, we have selected the open access LUCAS (Land Use and Climate Across Scales) Land Use and land Cover change (LUC) data set as the basis for the land use scenarios. In the case of water demand for domestic and industry sectors it was possible to develop the river basin-specific data sets by applying a flexible framework using existing downscaling concepts, scripts and global data sets and approaches. The domestic and industrial water demand data sets are also driven by the SSP scenarios for future periods. In addition, the irrigation water demand data set, also driven by the SSPs, was prepared), following the same principle of unlocking high-quality, existing data sets as in the case of land use.

The generated data sets have been stored in Zenodo and are easily findable and accessible:

• The first data set, entitled “Historical and future land use and land cover data for the STARS4Water river basins”, is available at the following link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14246388 (Giełczewski & Piniewski, 2024a). It consists of the .csv file with historical and future LULCC data for all river basins (and sub-basins in case of Danube and Rhine) and a shapefile with river basin (sub-basin) boundaries. Both files can be joined in a GIS environment using the basin name field.
• The second data set, entitled “Historical and future water demand for households and industry for the STARS4Water river basins”, is available at the following link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14252777 (Szporak-Wasilewska, 2024). It consists of two files:
  • STARS4Water_Domestic_and_Industrial_Water_Demands_historical.zip (2000-2020);
  • STARS4Water_Domestic_and_Industrial_Water_Demands_projections.zip (2020-2050, for SSP1-SSP5).                    
• The third data set entitled “Historical and future irrigation water demand for the STARS4Water river basins” is available at the following link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14246228 (Giełczewski & Piniewski, 2024b). It consists of the .csv file with historical and future summer net irrigation water demand for all river basins (and sub-basins in the case of Danube and Rhine) and a shapefile with river basin (sub-basin) boundaries. Both files can be joined in a GIS environment using the basin name field.

More information can be found in the following STARS4Water project Deliverable:

Piniewski, M., Szporak-Wasilewski, S., Giełczewski, M., Okruszko, T., Sperna Weiland, F., Ter Maat, J., Beckers, J. (2024): Data Sets on Scenario Narratives. Horizon Europe project STARS4Water. Deliverable D2.5.